Society

Tuesday

Geoffrey Alderman

Everyone loses when universities lower their entry requirements

The UCAS deadline for the receipt of applications for university entry this coming autumn has just passed.  In terms of lifetime earnings a university degree – especially a degree from a top-drawer Russell Group university – is still excellent value for money, so thousands of students now working hard to complete their sixth-form studies will soon be waiting anxiously to see if their A-Level grades match university entry requirements.    I have some bad news for them. Some of them, who reach grades that would normally have guaranteed them a place, will nonetheless have been deliberately denied an offer, just so that others – who have not done so well at A-Level

Steerpike Steerpike

The Daily Mail’s new favourite Europhiles

Ahead of the government’s supreme court appeal against the high court ruling that Article 50 cannot be triggered without a Westminster vote, the Daily Mail ran an article suggesting the judges who ruled against the government were ‘enemies of the people’. What’s more, the paper then ran a handy guide which ranked the 11 Justices of the Supreme Court by giving each a ‘Europhile rating‘. However, after today’s ruling, Mr S wonders if the paper will have to rethink its approach to some arch-Europhiles. Although the government lost its appeal (and will now need to trigger Article 50 with a vote in Parliament), three Justices of the Supreme Court found in favour of

Helen Nugent

Sterling, banks, British Gas and fraud

There’s just one story in the UK this morning: the Supreme Court has ruled that the Government cannot trigger article 50 without an act of parliament. News that parliament must vote on starting the Brexit process led to a slight drop in the pound. At the time of writing, the pound is 0.6 per cent lower against the dollar at $1.246. Against the euro, sterling is 0.3 per cent lower at €1.160. Banks A think tank has urged banks to offer basic bank accounts to people with mental health problems. At present, basic account options are offered to other vulnerable groups. Now the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute say that setting spending

Monday

Andrew Hagger

Overdone it on the overdraft? Help is at hand

After being been paid a week or two early due to Christmas, and then shelling out on festive gifts and nights on the town, for many of us there’s too much month left at the end of the money. It’s at this time of the year that the overdraft facility from your bank can be a real lifesaver; it might cost a few quid for the privilege but at least you can get on with your life without worrying about not being able to pay the bills. However, not everybody relies on their overdraft on an occasional basis or for a little flexibility now and again to tide them over

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Robert Hannigan’s surprise departure leaves a large hole to fill at GCHQ

The early departure of Robert Hannigan as GCHQ chief, announced today, marks not so much the end of an era as the transition between eras. The agency’s famous HQ in Cheltenham, a metallic doughnut the size of Wembley Stadium, might look futuristic but was designed in the late 1990s before anyone worked out just how much data the intelligence services would have to intercept and analyse. Or how much of espionage would involve codebreaking, and on such an unprecedented scale. The workload exploded as it opened in 2003 and suddenly a GCHQ designed for 5,000 staff looked too small. New ways of working were needed. Hannigan was brought in, as outsiders occasionally are to GCHQ, to

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The hypocrisy of the ‘Free Melania’ feminists

I like to prance around showing off in hats and shouting at men as much as the next broad but – apart from the fact that I can get it at home – there were several reasons why I chose not to join a whole batch of my bitches on the Women’s March this weekend. Firstly, I was sure it would be full of ‘Strong Women‘, a phrase I hate at the best of times – and feel should only be used if the lady in question can tear a telephone directory in half with her bare hands – and which seemed especially inappropriate to describe a bunch of overgrown Violet

Helen Nugent

Financial data, housing, business rates and customer service

Some worrying news from consumer group Which? this morning regarding trading of personal and financial data on a ‘huge scale’, sometimes illegally and in breach of guidelines from the Information Commissioner’s Office. The BBC reports that after contacting 14 companies that sell data, undercover Which? researchers were able to access personal information on approximately half a million people over the age of 50, including details about their salary and pensions, sometimes for as little as 4p an item. Information like this can be instrumental in helping scammers who con people out of their pension savings, or persuade them to move money from their bank accounts. Housing The Guardian reports on new research

Saturday

Charlotte Gill

Britain’s spy agencies could do with a woman’s touch

I always knew security agencies were missing a trick with the ladies. Currently, less than four in ten workers in MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are female, which isn’t just embarrassing, but bad for national security; because women have the potential to be great spies.  But things are about to change. Since 2015, intelligence services have been on a massive drive to get more women into the ranks, scouting around Mumsnet for older, patriotic would-be agents. GCHQ has even announced a competition to find 13 to 15-year-old girls for the industry, having realised the worth of social-media savvy young girls.  I’m surprised it took the intelligence agencies so long to recognise the

Friday

The Spectator

Wanted: a new production editor for The Spectator

One of the most important jobs in The Spectator is opening up, and we’re looking for a pretty exceptional person to fill it. Peter Robins, our brilliant production editor (read about him here) is off to the New York Times. We’re looking for someone with skill, patience and a love of writing to take his place. When Graham Greene was working at The Spectator, he said the magazine can be described rather simply: it’s the best-written weekly in the English language. As such, we’re one of the few titles to have increased what we invest in sub-editing over the years. The calibre of The Spectator can be seen in the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

No, Donald Trump isn’t a ‘massive, magnificent gift’ for Britain

There are certain traditional ceremonies without which the inauguration of a new American president cannot take place. Chief among them, at least on this side of the atlantic, is the opportunity such a moment provides for pondering anew the health and well-being of the ‘special relationship’. A remarkable amount of tripe must be talked on these occasions. You will recall how Bill Clinton’s supposedly-unhappy time at Oxford prejudiced him against this country and you will recall, of course, that Barack Obama’s Kenyan heritage left him temperamentally ill-disposed towards this sceptr’d isle. Obama, of course, confirmed this by removing the now famous Churchill bust from the Oval Office, an act of unpardonable

Thursday

Raymond Keene

no. 440

White to play. This is from Réti-Tartakower, Vienna 1910. Can you spot White’s beautiful tactical coup? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 24 January or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 … Rxf3+ Last week’s winner Alan Dawkins, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire

Raymond Keene

Hypermodern

Richard Réti is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of chess thought. The author of two seminal books, Modern Ideas in Chess and Masters of the Chessboard, Réti was an expert in simultaneous blindfold chess, successfully taking on many opponents at one and the same time. In terms of his theories and games, his assertion that the centre need not be occupied by pawns must have seemed the chess equivalent of Dada to the classically minded grandmasters of his day, such as Tarrasch, Teichmann and Rubinstein. At the time it was dubbed ‘Hypermodern’ by Savielly Tartakower.   Réti’s successes at the significant tournaments of Kaschau 1918, Amsterdam

The Spectator

Barometer | 19 January 2017

Starting cold Why is US Presidential Inauguration Day always on 20 January? — The date was moved from 4 March in the 20th amendment to the US constitution, passed on 23 January 1933, but it is hard to find any significance to the date. The change was made in an attempt to reduce the lame-duck period of an outgoing president, though it did increase the risk of a repeat of what happened in 1841 when William Henry Harrison was sworn in. Choosing not to wear a coat, hat or gloves, he made the longest inaugural speech of any president, at two hours. Three weeks later he was reported to be

Taki

High life | 19 January 2017

 Athens I can only ask sardonically: was it worth it? Executed after unspeakable torture without giving anything away — and for what? Fat, avaricious and very rich Davos Man? Or those ignorant, self-indulgent, cowardly little twerps who demand ‘safe spaces in universities’? Was it worth dying for the crooks of Brussels and the Angela Merkels of this world? Poor, heroic and stoic Kostas Perrikos, whose statue stands on Gladstone Street in Athens, died a hero, and for what? Let’s begin with heroes. They are very different from peacocks. They don’t strut or take selfies, and they are mostly sotto voce. They don’t create whirlwinds and are a PR huckster’s nightmare.

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 19 January 2017

Our friend Anthony was reportedly dying and a party of four drove over to the nursing home to say cheerio. The journey across deepest Provence was an hour and a half each way and we went in my old Mercedes. I fixed my attention on the badge and the twisting road beyond it, rhythmically chewing one square after another of 4mg fruit-flavoured nicotine gum. My morning dose of 75mg Venlafaxine filtered out extraneous thought, self-criticism and fantasy, leaving me feeling unusually self-possessed. The mental picture I keep of Anthony is just the eyes, which are a startling shade of light blue. I’ve never got used to them. Since I have

Melissa Kite

Real life | 19 January 2017

If the buyer asks me any more questions I am going to pull out. I have to put my foot down somewhere or this is going to drag on indefinitely. I went under offer some months ago now and it was thought I might be in my dream cottage for Christmas. Ha! The next prevailing theory was that I would be in by the end of January. That’s a laugh too. After various legal nightmares to do with disputed rights of way, unmade shared- access tracks and windows in neighbouring properties facing the wrong way, the purchase of the country cottage is good to go. The problem is the other

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 19 January 2017

I am very bad at remembering my dreams: I would have been a poor patient for Dr Freud. But I know that as a little boy most of my dreams were rather frightening, even if I can’t recall them in detail. An oft-repeated dream involved a monstrous apparition that would rush down from the sky into my bedroom and be about to attack me or gobble me up, when I would suddenly leap awake, much relieved that nothing unpleasant had happened. I can’t describe what the monster looked like, except that it was amorphous and not human. Occasionally the dressing-gown hanging from my door would suddenly transform itself into its

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Trumped!

Trump Tower sits between Gucci and Tiffany on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It looks like infant Lego, the Duplo brand, but black — porn Duplo, then. It is militarised; by the door are the fattest police officers I have ever seen. They look like they have been dragged out of Overeaters Anonymous and given automatic weapons; and I wonder how much the NYPD really want to keep him alive. He is in the penthouse. The obvious comparison is with Al Pacino’s penthouse in The Devil’s Advocate, in which Pacino played a devil in a penthouse in New York City, but Trump Tower is less subtle than that, and

Dot Wordsworth

Carillion

‘Look, darling, a spelling mistake,’ said my husband, looking out of the window, as he had been for minutes, like a lonely old woman. Sure enough, a van was parked in the street with a word painted on the side: Carillion. Now, an unpleasant collection of bells hit automatically by hammers is called a carillon. Carillon can be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, with or without a Frenchified middle consonant. Or it can be pronounced to rhyme with ‘a million’, which is perhaps where people get the idea that it contains more than one i. As a trade name, you might think it perpetuates some founding father.

Toby Young Toby Young

A myth that keeps growing and growing

I had lunch recently with an assistant head of a leading independent school and he told me about their ‘growth mindset’ work. He was excited about this and he’s by no means exceptional. Eton, Wellington and Stowe have all enthusiastically embraced it, as have thousands of state schools. Highgate Wood, a comprehensive in north London, says on its website that ‘growth mindset is the cornerstone of our learning ethos’. I hesitate to call growth mindset a ‘fad’ because that implies it lacks the imprimatur of academic respectability when the opposite is true. The term was coined by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, who made a startling discovery